h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

it's the story with Ivanhoe, for me. Just so... Romantic.

I read Waverley a while ago and I also found it dull. In fact, I've read a number of first novels by 'classic' authors and found many of them failed to live up to the later works. Mark Twain's first novel was co-written with somebody and didn't have a single character I could relate to. Robinson Crusoe takes a while to get going and has little or no dialogue to make it interesting. Adam Bede by George Eliot has dialogue in some kind of dialect/accent which is distracting. There are others, but they've blurred so I can't remember them all.

I absolutely adored Robinson Crusoe. And The Scarlet Letter is good - as are the Leatherstocking tales (most people stick at The Last of the Mohicans though)

I admit there are some classics I've had to read twice, either because I couldn't finish them the first time or because I wasn't experienced enough to appreciate them. As an example, I couldn't get through Madame Bovary the first time I tried it, and the second time I still found her a bit of a drip. I'm wondering what the 'heroine' would have been like if a woman had written that story.

There were elements of Anna Karenina I just didn't get the first time round, but I was in my late teens/early twenties when I read it. I read it again in my forties, after the death of my father and father-in-law, and I was able to relate to certain aspects a lot better.

I won't say I adored Robinson Crusoe, but over the years I've read enough travel books for what he went through to make some kind of sense. Considering the fact that Defoe was writing a story based solely on somebody else's experiences, it's actually pretty good. Don't get me started on Swiss Family Robinson, which was supposedly inspired by Robinson Crusoe. That book is dire, IMO, and doesn't bear comparison in any way. (Tigers and penguins on the same island, for crying out loud!) In the words of Dorothy Parker, "This book should not be tossed aside lightly. It should be thrown with great force."

"...set aside lightly..."

I'm not being pedantic, but if she had said "tossed aside lightly", the joke just wouldn't work!

I apologise, it seems that she did indeed say "tossed".

I'm slightly less fond of the put-down, now.

Actually, it works better with 'tossed', IMO. 'Tossed aside lightly' suggests discarding the book carelessly and contrasts well with 'thrown with great force', which suggests determination (and possibly vindictiveness).

The humour in "to set aside lightly" would have been that "to set aside" is also a colloquialism meaning to disregard, or to leave something to be addressed later. "Tossed aside" doesn't have the same ambiguity.

For me, much of the humour was that the first clause led one to think she meant "this is not a book one should disregard without first giving it a lot of thoughtt", before the unexpected ending.

But she wrote what she wrote, and a good line it is.

Finished The Englishman, the Moor and the Holy City. The Englishman was called Henry Timberlake. His grandson, also Henry Timberlake, emigrated to Rhode Island, but despite having numerous children, he's unlikely to be related to Justin.

Started Letters of a Lost Generation as my bedtime/bathroom book. It's the letters to/from Vera Brittain, her brother and three of their male friends. All the men (actually little more than boys by the reckoning of the time) went into the army at the outbreak of the First World War. Being based on letters, it's an ideal book to dip into.

'The humour in "to set aside lightly" would have been that "to set aside" is also a colloquialism meaning to disregard, or to leave something to be addressed later. "Tossed aside" doesn't have the same ambiguity.'

Actually I'd understand 'tossed aside' to have the same double meaning.

Anyroad, I'm now reading Slow River by Nicola Griffith. It's a cyberpunk set in the near future of the early 21st century when we all have computer chips implanted in our hands, private cars are no more and pollution is threatening to overwhelm the water system.

For the record, Ivanhoe is waiting to be read.

"tossed aside" to me is dismissive, as I think she meant, but not with the emphasis that "thrown with great force" has, and that's the contrast IMO.

Finished the 3rd of the "Game of Thrones" books and dived straight into the 4th.

Good luck. A Feast for Crows is the least-loved of the ASOIAF books. I'll be interested to hear your thoughts.

I've just had a look at my list of Not Read tree books. I'm down to 101, but there's 22 books I haven't catalogued yet. They're uncatalogued because they were bought in sets and I didn't want to break into them until I'd got my Not Read list below 100. Anyhow, I've discovered that only 17 of the Not Read books are fiction, a total that goes up to 33 out of 123 if I add in the uncatalogued books.

I suppose this is evidence of how my reading tastes have changed over the years. Taken as a whole, my books split roughly 50-50 between fiction and non-fiction. However, I've bought more non-fiction over recent years, mostly history.

The Gods of Gotham by Lindsay Faye. It's about a policeman in mid-C19th New York, so same setting as Gangs of New York. I didn't know it was going to be about such a nasty subject as child prostitution, but it's still a good read.

The Leopard by Giuseppe di Lampedusa. Another one I've had for a long time. I've nearly finished it, and it's well worth reading, if a bit slim.

Pies and Prejudice by Stuart Maconie. I liked the other one I read by him (can't recall the title) - I love this modern kind of travel writing

I remember disliking that book. As a jumped-up Wiganer, he's very anti-Manchester and anti-Salford, while being in love with some vision of Merseyside that doesn't exist outside the heads of people who've never been to Liverpool but who have heard Cilla Black talk.

I like his writing style - to be honest as I come from Yorkshire I prety much regard everything on the other side of the Penines as a bit of a theme park

It is pretty much based on his very personal view of things, so if you compare it with, say, Bill Bryson or George Orwell it's not so much a travelogue as a comment piece. But I'm enjoying it hugely. It is a vast improvement over dry uni books about economics which is what I have been mostly reading lately.

The Complete Father Brown Stories by GK Chesterton. I doubt that I'll read the lot straight through (52 stories, 800+ pages), but probably intersperse them with other things. They're very readable, with a subtle humour. Favourite line so far: "If I ever murder anyone, I dare say it might be an Optimist".

I've read the Father Brown stories and you definitely don't want to read them all in one go. They get a bit samey if you do. One thing I will say about Chesterton - he didn't understand atheists. I suppose that's not too surprising for a High Church Anglican turned Roman Catholic. It irritated me a bit, but I didn't let it spoil my enjoyment of the stories.